Posts tagged RKO

Irene Dunne — Sexier Than You Might Think.

Oct17
2012 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

She started out in “weepies,” women’s pictures for the matinee crowd, but she hit her stride in sophisticated, “screwball” comedies.  But no matter what part she played Irene Dunne was always “the Lady,” both on and off the screen.

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, going out a bit of a limb here today.

That’s because we are making the boldface assertion that if you have to see only one Irene Dunne picture, make it RKO’s Love Affair, director Leo McCarey’s 1939 romantic drama in which the actress portrays an American woman romanced by a French playboy (Charles Boyer).

Both leads are superb as is a supporting character performance contributed by Maria Ouspenskaya are a kindly grandmother. But what unmistakably registers is Dunne’s sexy performance blending rueful emotion with a light comedic touch.

Somehow, Dunne and sex  are words that don’t often crop up in the same sentence. Yes, Dunne was by all means a Lady.  But a surprisingly sexy one even by contemporary standards.  In this film she looks terrific. It’s not surprising to learn that Love Affair is Dunne’s as well as Boyer’s favorite of their pictures.

Yes, Dunne started out as a singer.  A stage performance in Show Boat led to an RKO contract and her debut in Leathernecking in 1930. Stardom was cemented when she took the reins in 1932 of John Stahl’s Back Street melodrama, firmly establishing Dunne as the queen of weepies.

Her great facility with comedy was amply displayed in 1937′s The Awful Truth costarring Cary Grant, who expressed admiration for her comic timing and something else. Grant remarked, said Dunne, that she was “the sweetest smelling actress he ever worked with.”

When it came to the Academy Awards, Dunne was nominated five times but never won.  Her subtle, provocative performance in Love Affair was undoubtedly the victim of bad timing.

The film came out in the year of Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Gunga Din, Ninotchka and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington among other memorable titles.  Pretty steep competition.

So, we recommend you take another look at this wonderful movie, 87 minutes of bliss.  Yes, Irene Dunne reigned as Hollywood’s “Lady.” But she was also one sexy woman.

 

 

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NO MYSTERY THIS MONDAY. LOVERS ON SCREEN AND OFF

Sep17
2012 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

OK, we’re back to being Mr. Nice Chaps this week. (No more Buddy Greco’s to baffle you.)

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, with another of our Monday “name-the-stars” challenges featuring some of the candid photos in our collection.

We’ve written a lot about the woman in the top shot and the fellow in the bottom photo.  So naming them should not be difficult.

Here’s a giant hint. Each of the couples pictured above had torrid affairs while making a film together. One eventually married.  The other didn’t.  Both couples made subsequent films together.

To make the challenge this time at least minimally testing, we’d like you to not only name the couples but also the principal film in which they were costarred.

As the French say, bonne chance.

As for the identity of last Monday’s mystery “third woman,” if you named Harriet Hilliard, you win a huge prize (again, don’t know what that would be). Harriet adopted a new surname when she married bandleader Ozzie Nelson.  She was the band’s singer.

Both Nelsons (along with David and Ricky too) became household names as the stars of the long-running family tv sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.

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Who’s the Third Woman? Mystery Monday Photo Time

Sep10
2012 3 Comments Written by classicmovieguys

We’re always going on on these pages about The Third Man.  So with this week’s Mystery Monday Photo we’ve decided to concentrate on The Third Woman.

Hello. everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, with another Monday challenge to identify the personalities featured in candid shots from our photo collection.

We’re betting that you’ll easily recognize two of the three film stars in the above photo.  But who’s the third?

We’re in a generous mood some here are some hints.  The actress to the left is best remembered as the partner of one Frederick Austerlitz.

The one in the middle was a fiery type, once slapping at a Hollywood party a man she accused of pimping for her foreign-born husband. She also became in her second life America’s most popular tv comedienne.

All three actresses were under contract at RKO.

Don’t feel bad if the name of that “third woman” doesn’t come to mind.  Her movie credits are both slim and forgettable.  She made herself felt much more on television.

Bonne chance, and keep the guesses coming.

As for last Monday’s stars, if you named Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, you win the prize (about which we haven’t a clue).

Also, we forgot to name those individuals in the photo we ran on Aug. 27, you know, the picture with awful resolution showing several well known and not-so-well known figures. Might be worth clicking onto the blog for a photo refresher.

First off, the woman to the left is then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.  Next to her is actress Frances Gifford (no relation to former sportscaster Frank).  Next moving right is singer-actress Frances Langford and then Elyse Knox-Harmon (wife of Tom and mother of Mark).

You probably had little trouble naming the trio at the right beginning with Cary Grant, then Claudette Colbert and Bob Hope. 

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HOWARD HUGHES — The World’s Greatest Womanizer?

Nov23
2011 1 Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Hello, everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, back again with our second, and most interesting, of two Howard Hughes blogs.

Yesterday we presented Hughes as the Godzilla of that once venerable film studio, RKO Pictures. Today we offer Howard as he perhaps would have preferred us to see him — as Hollywood’s most dedicated seducer. 

One of Hughes’ longtime associates, Noah Dietrich, put Hughes in perspective with this observation:

Howard’s involvement with RKO had other motivations than the pursuit of profit and furtherance of the art of cinema.  It also aided the exercise of his libido. I was never certain throughout Howard’s long association with the motion picture industry whether his amours were an offshoot of that activity or film production was a screen for his romantic adventures.

Howard was 43 when he took over RKO in 1948. His first marriage ended in 1929, and his second (to actress Jean Peters) didn’t begin until 1957.  He was tall (6 feet-4 inches), lean and physically far more presentable than other movie moguls of the time.

After his near-death plane crash in Beverly Hills two years prior to his RKO purchase, Hughes’ ample supply of personal quirks became more pronounced. His hearing problem worsened. He became more reclusive, which meant his many female liaisons were conducted under unusually complicated circumstances.

Joan Fontaine in her 1978 autobiography recalls that she was often proposed to by Hughes. (Howard was given to proffering marriage offers willy-nilly.) She writes:

I was never in love with Howard. As a matter of fact, I was a little afraid of him. Certainly one could not be relaxed and at ease with a man of so much wealth, power, and influence. He had no humor, no gaiety, no sense of joy, no vivacity that was apparent to me.

Everything seemed to be a ‘deal,’ a business arrangement, regardless of the picture he had tried to paint of our future together.

Why then did Fontaine entertain Hughes’ romantic blandishments?  Money is sexy and he certainly had a blinding overabundance of cash.

Fontaine was hardly the only actress fascinated but not necessarily involved romantically with Hughes. Add to that list Jane Russell, the bosomy actress Hughes “discovered” and notoriously cast in her maiden movie, the “sex-western” titled The Outlaw (completed in 1941 but not released until 1943).

Did she ever sleep with Hughes?  Jane said, absolutely not.  

She found him likable, kooky and timid. I often hollered at Howard, and I think in a funny kind of way I scared him. Hughes would later confide to friends, that woman terrified me. The mogul made one serious pass, according to Jane, but got nowhere.

Hughes did volunteer during the making of “The Outlaw” to design a fitted bra for Russell. “I found it uncomfortable and ridiculous,” was her verdict.

According to the actress’ 1984 autobiography, the powerful agent Lew Wasserman, who represented Jane at one point, asked her: “Look, are you sleeping with this guy or what?” A stunned Russell responded, “No, Lew, my God! He’s my friend.”

It is more or less a matter of record (check out director Martin Scorsese’s superb 2004 Hughes biopic The Aviator) that Howard and Katharine Hepburn were seriously involved in every sense.  She reportedly kept a stash of love letters exchanged between the two until she died eight years ago.

According to her biographer Beverly Linet, the big Fifties star Susan Hayward and Hughes were definitely an item probably in 1953, after the actress had survived a bruising divorce. Linet writes that the mogul was widely known for bedding only once a beauty he admired, even though their dates might continue for weeks or even months more.

Whether this pattern held for Hughes’ affair with Ava Gardner is a matter of conjecture. While she was still married to her first husband, Mickey Rooney, Gardner was presented with an engagement ring. According to her biographer Lee Server, Ava responded with, ‘Don’t be silly, Howard.’  

Ava thought it was ridiculous. They weren’t in love. She didn’t love him.

Then there is the case of Jean Simmons.  Hughes had her under contract at RKO but was less interested in her movie career than in bedding the British actress despite her marriage at the time to Stewart Granger, who loathed the mogul.

Curiously, Simmons would later say that she didn’t, at the time, notice Hughes’ dishonorable intentions. Instead, she claimed he had acted gentlemanly, warning her that Granger was after her money.

The objects of Hughes’ intentions honorable or otherwise totaled more than 50 actresses including Lana Turner, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers (pictured above), Elizabeth Taylor, Janet Leigh, Faith Domergue and Jane Greer (pictured below)

Perhaps, for Hughes, it was the pursuit that was all-important, the knowledge that he could go after what he wanted — and get it, writes Linet.

Certainly, by all accounts, the women pursued did not mind, Paradoxically, no lady linked with Hughes has ever had an unkind word to say about him — not even after his death (in 1976, at the age of 71).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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HOWARD HUGHES — The Godzilla of Big Studio Moguls

Nov22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s become trendy in academic circles these days to view the big studio bosses — Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, the fractious Warner brothers, Darryl F. Zanuck,  Harry Cohn — as tough-as-nails egomaniacs and ruthlessly strong-willed dictators, necessary if you wanted to get the job done.

The moguls, goes this view, may not have been even remotely likable as individuals. But boy, they ran their respective dream factories with iron-grip efficiency. They may have been personally nasty, bestial to those who worked for them and renowned casting couch enthusiasts.  But, they were the tough, competent chiefs the Hollywood dream factories demanded.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys, here today to discuss the one mogul who definitely doesn’t qualify for this revisionist, forgiving academic assessment.

We are talking about Howard Hughes.  (That’s a flattering photo of young Howard above.)

Of all the moguls, he most resembled today’s all-to-common financial and business executive who profits in incompetence, who screws up whole enterprises and then departs with a huge benefit package. When Hughes was through with RKO, the studio was in ruins while Howard was millions richer.

“While a profusion of books, articles, movies and television programs about Howard Hughes are biblical in scope, his ownership of RKO Studios has often been little more than a footnote compared to some of his more notable exploits,” writes Alan K. Rode, author of the excellent Charles McGraw: Biography of a Film Noir Tough Guy published by McFarland & Company.  (McGraw, a superb all-around supporting actor for decades, starred in some of RKO’s finest noir titles ever made during his two-year tenure at the studio, begun in January 1950.)

Rode argues that the famed builder of the “Spruce Goose” heavy transport aircraft never had the makeup of a studio mogul. “The balanced temperament and specialized skill sets required to run a delicately complex operation like a movie studio were noticeably absent from his personal repertoire.” That’s putting it mildly.

Hughes was far more interested in machinery than movies. In his 1978 memoir, director Edward Dmytryk wrote of his Hughes fascination. He recalled what Lewis Milestone (who directed two of Hughes’ early movie ventures, 1927′s Two Arabian Knights and the 1931 version of The Front Page) had told him. When Milestone planned to screen film footage, he was flatly told one day his usual projection room was not available.

“On his way past the booth, (Milestone) stuck in his head to see what was wrong.  There, on the floor, was a spread-out sheet, and on the sheet sat Howard Hughes, surrounded by the hundreds of parts of a completely stripped-down projection machine.

“Just wanted to see how it worked,” Hughes explained.

His work habits were strange, to put it mildly.  He often didn’t show up at the studio’s Gower and Melrose Streets headquarters. Robert Mitchum, a huge RKO star, dubbed him “The Phantom.” Hughes was a micro-manager, who hounded, alienated and finally drove out his cadre of expensive managers including producers Dore Schary and Jerry Wald, among many others.

Hughes obsessively reviewed final cuts, ordering extensive re-shooting at whim — expense and distribution dates be damned. He was infamous for delaying the release of finished pictures for years. And, he ripped through employee ranks, ordering wholesale firings.

Hughes bought RKO on May 11, 1948 for $8.8 million; that’s about $82.5 million in today’s dollars.  At the time there were 2,000 employees working at the studio. By 1953, there were about 450 left.  By then, Hughes was bored with being a studio boss.

Hughes managed to reach an agreement to sell RKO to a syndicate of Chicago investors with Mafia ties. That deal collapsed after the press got wind of some of the unsavory personalities involved (Hughes was suspected of leaking the information.)

In July 1955, the studio was finally sold to a unit of General Tire at a profit to Hughes of at least $6 million — which works out to the equivalent of $50 million in today’s dollars. (The Gower and Melrose lot was bought two years later by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, becoming their Desilu TV production colossus.)

“Hughes walked away with millions and (RKO) ceased to exist,” Rode notes.  Gone was the studio that gave us Citizen Kane, King Kong, Top Hat, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Journey Into Fear, The Magnificent Ambersons, the Val Lewton-produced titles and perhaps the best film noir ever made, Out of the Past.

Why did Hughes insist on trying to be a studio head?  We explore the answer to that in tomorrow’s blog.  Hint — it had much to do with a three-letter word beginning with “s” and ending with an “x.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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READERS SOUND OFF — about James Dean and MGM

Oct12
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

There are few things in life that tickle our fancies more than hearing from you, our faithful blog audience, in response to one or more of our Classic Movie treatises.

Hello, everybody. Joe Morella and Frank Segers back again. It’s amazing the amount of self serving junk email we get every day, so when genuine reader reaction to something we publish arrives electronically it’s cause for celebration.

We thought we’d spread the wealth today by discussing two recent missives.

The first from “Anonymous” takes us to task for asserting in our Sept. 22 blog that James Dean’s reputation as a screen actor is overblown, and that his performances in his three big movies — “Giant,” East of Eden” and “Rebel Without A Cause” — seem self conscious and dated today.

We won’t re-argue our case, which didn’t sit well with “Anonymous,” who writes:

“Your need to criticize (Dean) at all, when even if one-fifth of your observations contained enough truth within them to have caused any artist to have been swept into the forgotten dustbin of history, only heightens the profound nature of his singular genius to have lasted long enough to remain the object of your derision.

“Think about it if you can, because it gives away how very un-overblown he was, and how very, very wrong you are.”

We agree, Anonymous, that Dean’s legend certainly has lived on. His dying young at the start of what was considered a highly promising career helped.  But obviously we disagree about his merits as an actor. Joe believes Dean’s early television work is excellent. Frank hasn’t seen enough of his tv stuff to comment.

But we still feel there is James Dean the legend versus James Dean the screen actor. The former is as remarkable as you suggest, but the latter isn’t as impressive. Thanks for writing in, and we’d certainly welcome hearing more from you about his “singular genius.”

Jessica P. (Comet Over Hollywood) liked our evocation of what a major studio looked like back in Hollywood’s classic heyday. The Sept. 23 blog was inspired by the recent publication of a lavishly illustrated coffee table book, “MGM — Hollywood’s Greatest Backlot.”

She writes: “MGM really was the best movie studio, I think.

“Sure, Fox, Paramount, Warner and RKO all have their big blockbuster movies they are known for, but I don’t think any of them (well maybe Warner in its own way) had the same power and amount of hits as MGM — the studio with ‘more stars than in the heavens.’

“It’s really a shame that the most powerful studio is the one that no longer exists.”

Actually, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer still exists, Jessica, in emaciated form. The company emerged from bankruptcy late last year, and assembled a new management team. It is currently involved in several co-productions not the least of which are a pair of James Bond sequels.

However, it might interest you to know that the Culver Studios, one of Hollywood’s oldest independent lots (13 sound stages), is now on the market for the asking price of $150 million.  Built in 1918 by silent movie director-writer Thomas Ince, Culver Studios have been owned at various times by Cecil B. DeMille and successive RKO heads Joseph Kennedy and Howard Hughes.

Part of “Gone With the Wind” was shot on Culver Studios sets as was most of Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.” If we had a spare $150 million lying around, we’d immediately put in our bid.

 

 

 

 

 

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TONY CURTIS AND JANET LEIGH –a Hollywood Marriage

Jun22
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

First, let’s set the pivotal scene….

The small wedding party gathered on a beautiful spring day outside the courthouse in Greenwich, Conn. The ceremony was delayed by the late arrival of  the best man, Jerry Lewis, who had earlier advised Janet and Tony against their marriage (but later recanted).

Hello Everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers here again.. Today, we bring you Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis in their own words.  He said, She said.

Janet said:

It was “short, sweet, sedate and solemn. We gave each other our plain gold bands, and I was Mrs. Bernie Schwartz…It was glorious, it was happy, it was fun, it was volatile, it was crazy – it was wonderful!…That set the tone for the rest of the day. And for a lot of years as well.”

Tony said:

“Despite all the warnings and naysayers, Janet and I were married one day after my birthday, on June 4, 1951, in the country outside New York City…Our wedding was a lot of fun. We had a wonderful dinner at Danny’s Hideaway, a trendy New York restaurant.”

Thus began one of the most celebrated star marriages in Hollywood history. Janet’s recollection of the day is emotionally effusive.  Tony’s is more self-centered and matter-of-fact.

Both accounts are contained in books each wrote decades after their wedding – Janet’s in “There Really Was A Hollywood: An Autobiography,” published by Doubleday in 1984; and Tony’s in his remarkably candid “American Prince: A Memoir,” written with Peter Golenbock and published by Harmony Books in 2008.

The groom was 26 at the time of the marriage, a teen-idol-in-the-making under contract to Universal Pictures. He had 10 undistinguished movie appearances under his belt including “The Prince Who Was A Thief,” a swashbuckler with Curtis co-starring opposite Piper Laurie.

He recalled that during promotional tours for the movie, “ the girls would scream” when he walked onstage. “It happened in every city. It was nuts. I couldn’t believe that I could generate that kind of response after nothing but bit parts and one starring role.”  But Curtis soon got used the idea. His career of was off and running.

Janet was a month shy of her 24th birthday when she married Tony.  It was Tony’s first marriage, but Janet had been wed before –twice. She’d eloped at 15.  Her parents had that annulled. Then as a 19 year old she married again.  But when she signed with MGM that marriage was dissolved too.

When she and Curtis wed she was the much bigger star.   She was such a hot property that even psycho-lecher Howard Hughes found himself making lavishly expensive but unsuccessful plays for her sexual favors – a practice he usually reserved only for the most established leading actresses.

Hughes wasn’t the only shady character in hot pursuit of Janet before the wedding.  Another suitor was Johnny Stompanato. Yes, THAT Stompanato — the gangster-lover of Lana Turner who was fatally stabbed by Turner’s daughter, Cheryl.

In 1950, Janet was starring in Hughes’ production of “Jet Pilot” at RKO studios, an ill-fated movie that took seven years to finally reach theaters. Perhaps symbolically, given the outcome of their marriage, it was also the time that Janet first met Curtis.

She was on loan to RKO from her home studio, MGM, and was moving in swift company – director Josef von Sternberg, leading man John Wayne and, of course, producer-studio-owner Hughes.

As Tony tells it, Janet, playing a Russian fighter pilot of all things, decided to attend an RKO publicity party directly from the “Jet Pilot” set. He was there as well. “She had her hair pulled back, making her look sweet and vulnerable, and, boy, was I stunned by the way she looked,” recalled Tony.

Janet was more specific. The RKO publicity party was held at Lucy’s, a popular Hollywood watering hole on Gower Street and Melrose Avenue. “The gathering was in full swing when we arrived.…At one point I was introduced to a devastatingly handsome young man – beautiful really – with black unruly hair, large sensitive eyes fringed by long dark eyelashes, a full sensuous mouth – and an irresistible personality…I didn’t forget him.”

Janet Leigh was at the peak of her beauty, as the photo above attests.

Throughout their ensuing courtship Tony felt somehow inferior. Janet, he wrote, “was someone I admired greatly, and I badly wanted her to admire me back.  She was better educated than I was, and I was honored that she wanted to spend time with me.” Then comes this confession:

“Janet and I had been nuts about each other when we first started going out.  We loved the sex, and we loved the companionship; but it wasn’t long before the differences between us that had seemed so exciting at first started to create friction…(Janet) had developed very firm ideas about how everything should be.”

Janet would criticize Tony’s manners at parties; would feel uncomfortable with the attention that came with celebrity while Tony thrived on it. She began, said Tony,  “bossing me around, just as my mother had bossed my father around.” Curtis suffered through a Dickensian New York childhood explaining why he never liked to be reminded about the old days.

In her book Janet glosses over or ignores outright the couple’s early differences.  Instead, she warmly recalls their foreign travels, the socializing with their famous friends (notably the Kennedys) and the movies they were working on. And, of course, the arrival of the couple’s two daughters, Kelly Ann and Jamie Lee.

But their children didn’t cement the crumbling marriage.


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